Share this story

At Nintendo's E3 press conference this morning, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said NintendoLand would serve as the new system's version of Wii Sports; a killer app that could immediately convey the appeal of the system's new controller to a skeptical audience. And in fact, NintendoLand does a good job of demonstrating what can be done with the touchscreen-equipped GamePad, but I'm not sure it will attract the same, wide audience of non-traditional gamers that Wii Sports did.

The main problem with the five NintendoLand mini-games the company is showing at E3 is that they tend to require quite a bit of explanation to understand. Take Animal Crossing: Sweet Day, a slightly tweaked version of the hide-and-seek tech demo Nintendo showed off at last year's E3. Before we got going, a PR rep had to spend about a minute explaining how the four players with Wii Remotes are working together to collect candy, how carrying more candy slows a player down, and how to drop candy when the antagonists (controlled by the GamePad) got too close. It's not too complicated by video game standards, but it's far from the five-second "swing it like a tennis racquet" explanation of Wii Sports, and it's likely enough to scare away anyone not already versed in how games work.

Similarly, the player using the GamePad in Sweet Day has to control two separate characters using the GamePad's two analog sticks, a concept that is a bit difficult to master even for people with a lot of video game experience. Trying to get your non-gaming grandmother to play this role in NintendoLand seems likely to be a lot tougher than getting her to try a few frames of Wii Sports bowling.

For some of the other demos, it wasn't exactly clear how the Wii U GamePad actually made the game better than similar games on the Wii or other systems. In the Takamaru's Ninja Castle mini-game, for example, you turn the GamePad perpendicular to the TV and hold it awkwardly in one palm, flicking the touchscreen to send out throwing stars with the other. The setup was uncomfortable and unwieldy, and the GamePad's gyroscopic sensor kept making my aim drift slightly to the right as the demo progressed. It had me longing for the days where I could just point the Wii Remote at the screen to aim an on-screen reticle.

Enlarge/ While aiming arrows with the GamePad screen is fun, it's not quite as intuitive as anything in Wii Sports.

Kyle Orland

Likewise, Donkey Kong's Crash Course has players tilting the entire bulky GamePad to control the speed and pitch of a precarious two-wheeled cart navigating a maze-like 2D obstacle course. I felt like just tilting a Wii Remote would have been both more accurate and less tiring than manipulating the large GamePad, and the zoomed-in camera view provided by the tablet screen wasn't enough to make up for the drawbacks.

But some of the mini games in NintendoLand aren't quite so rough around the edges: The Legend of Zelda: Battle Quest did a little better at showing how the Wii U GamePad can be used for entirely new gameplay. Here you hold the tablet's screen in front of you like a first-person window into another world, moving it around in real space to aim arrows and lend support to sword-wielding players using Wii Remotes. The touchscreen's narrow view has a way of focusing your attention, and moving it about to look for targets felt a bit more realistic than just twiddling a thumbstick.

And the demo of Luigi's Ghost Mansion best showed off the Wii U's potential for what Nintendo is calling asymmetrical multiplayer. Here, the GamePad-controlled ghost is invisible to the Remote-wielding players watching the TV screen, letting the ghost player use his improved information to sneak up to them. Meanwhile, the Remote-wielding players get a slight rumble when the ghost approaches, giving them a fair chance to protect themselves and forcing a lot of cross-talk communication.

This is the kind of new, multiplayer experience that proves the value of the Wii U. But it seems like it will take a group of accommodating friends and a real willingness to learn some very video-gamey conventions to fully grok that potential. If Nintendo is hoping these demos will be as appealing to non-gamers as the head-smackingly simple and intuitive games in Wii Sports and its ilk, it has its work cut out for it.

Share this story

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl